“Perhaps even the great machines of the Old Ones are subject to failure.”
“Quantum tunnelling,” said Babo. “That’s how they do it. That’s how this thing in the core sends this Moon from universe to universe.”
Manekato said, “Tell me what you mean, brother.”
“You understand the concept. An electron, say, does not have a precise position or velocity; rather it is embedded in a spreading cloud of probability. Given a measurement of its position, there is a small but finite chance that the electron will next be found — not close to the last position — but far away, outside any cage you care to throw around it — or at the heart of the sun — or in orbit around a distant star…”
“Yes, yes. Or even another universe. Is that your point?”
He scratched his head absently. “Well, we know that quantum tunnelling can cause the nucleation of a new universe. The vacuum sustains a series of energy levels. A bubble of ‘our’ vacuum can tunnel to an otherwise empty spacetime at a lower energy state, and there expand and become causally disconnected from our own…”
“We are talking of moving not an electron, but a world.”
Babo shrugged. “I think we have the pieces of the puzzle now, at least; perhaps understanding will follow.”
“In any case, our next object is clear,” Manekato said. She pressed a finger into the crater at the top of the tube from the core; she could barely feel the feather-touch of its tiny rim. “We must go to this strange crater, learn all we can — and, perhaps, seek a way to direct the future course of this rogue Moon.”
“The manifold is a sheaf of possible universes,” Nemoto said.
Babo grimaced. “What did she say?”
Nemoto went on, “I understand some of what you say. Perhaps the manifold universes were nucleated from a single primal universe by some such mechanism as quantum tunnelling. Perhaps the nucleation of the universes was deliberate. Perhaps the Old Ones lived in the primal universe…”
Babo bared his teeth at her, and Nemoto fell silent.
Manekato said dryly, “What’s wrong?”
“She sees so much,” Babo said. “Much further than I imagined. If she sees so much, will she not see that the achievements of the Old Ones are as far beyond us as…”
“As our Farms and our Maps are beyond her poor grasp?” She touched his shoulder, mock-grooming, seeking to calm him. “But would that be so bad? Would it hurt us to learn some of her humility?”
“I don’t think she is so humble, Mane. Look at the defiance in that small face. It is unnatural. It is like being challenged by a Worker.”
A cry rent the air.
Nemoto turned sharply. Manekato felt her ears swivel. It had been a cry of pain and despair — an animal’s cry, but desolating none the less.
Nemoto began to run towards the place the cry had come from.
After a moment’s hesitation, Manekato hurried after her pet.
“Oh, let me up; I beg you. Madam Daemon, by the blood of Christ, let me up!”
It was Without-Name, of course. She had caught another hominid. She had him sprawled on the smooth floor of the compound with her massive foot in the small of the back, so that he could do little but flop like a fish. He was wearing clothes of a cruder design than Nemoto’s — scraps of skin sewn together with bits of hide, as if he had clambered inside the gruesome reconstruction of a dead animal. It seemed his capture had not been without incident. Blood leaked from a filthy wound on his forehead, and his right foot was dangling at an awkward angle, just a mass of blood, badly pulped. His blood and snot and sweat, even his urine, had spilled over the floor of Adjusted Spacetime.
Others stood around the gruesome little tableau. Manekato was dismayed to see fascination on several faces, as if the blood-soaked allure of this world was seeping into more than one soul.
She rested a hand on Nemoto’s shoulder. “He is a member of your troupe? That is why you are distressed.”
“No. I have never seen him before. And we don’t have ‘troupes’. But he is human, and he is suffering.”
Babo challenged Without-Name. “What new savagery is this, Renemenagota of Rano?”
“Am I the savage? Then what is this under my foot? We are not at home now, Manekato — we are not even on Earth. And if we wish to progress our inquiries we must abandon the techniques we would apply on the Earth.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You gaze at a pretty Map while the real world is all around you — vibrant, primal.” She slapped at the floor of Adjusted Space. “You even separate yourselves from the dirt. Have you stepped off this platform, Manekato, even once? I tell you, this is not a place for logic and Maps. It is a place of red and green, of life and blood and death — a place for the heart, not the head.”
“And your heart tells you to torment this helpless wretch,” Babo said.
“But not without a purpose,” Without-Name said. “He comes from a troupe of hominids to the north of here. They live in crude shelters of wood and mud, and they call themselves Zealots. They are as intelligent as your pet, Manekato but they are utterly insane, driven by dreams of a God they cannot see.” She bellowed laughter, and applied more pressure with her heel to the Zealot’s back; he groaned, his eyes rolling, as bones cracked. “These Zealots have been here for centuries. With their feeble eyes, their dim brains, they have seen this world which you are too frightened to touch. They have seen the workings of the Old Ones, for they have been dragged from one cosmos to the next by their meddling. And they have formulated their own ambition in response: to spit in the face of the sky itself.” She looked down at the sprawled, twitching hominid. “It is absurd. But in its way, it is magnificent. Hah! These are the creatures of this world. I want to see what they see, know what they know. That way I will learn the truth about the Old Ones — and what must be done to defeat them.”
Others growled assent behind her.
Manekato, deeply disturbed, stepped closer to Without-Name. “We did not come here to inflict pain.”
“There is no pain here,” Without-Name said easily. “For there is no sentience. You see only reflex, as a leaf follows the sunlight.”
“No.” It was Nemoto. She stepped forward, evading the clutching hand of Manekato.
The nameless one gaped at her, briefly too startled to react.
“I know that you understand me. I believe your species has superior cognition to my own. But nevertheless we have cognition. This man is aware of himself, of his pain. And he is terrified, for he is aware that you plan to kill him, Renemenagota.”
Without-Name reared up on her hind legs, and the man in the dust howled. “You will not use my name.”
“Let him go.” Nemoto held out her arms, her hands empty.
The moment stretched. Without-Name towered over the slim form of the hominid.
Then Without-Name stepped off the fallen man and pushed him away with her foot. She dropped to her knuckles and laughed. “Your pet has an amusing defiance, Manekato. Nevertheless I tell you that these creatures of the Moon are the key to our strategy here. The key!” And she knuckle-walked away towards the forest, where she blended into the shadows of the trees.
Where she had shoved him, the fallen Zealot had left a trail of urine and blood. Workers hurried forward to tend him, and to clean the mess he had made.
Manekato approached the trembling hominid. “Nemoto — I am sorry—”
Nemoto shrugged off her touch. “So you understand, at last. Let me reward you with a banana.” And she stalked away, her anger visible in every step, every gesture.
Reid Malenfant:
“About the desert,” McCann said. He took a half-burned twig and started to scrape at the red dust, sketching out a map. “Here is the Congo — I mean, the great river which rises in the foothills of the great volcano you call the Bullseye, the river that winds its way through the interior of the continent to debouche into the ocean beyond the forests. For much of its length the river’s flow is confined to a series of ancient canyons, where the stream is fed by a series of underground tributaries. The north bank is very arid. But on its south bank — here, for example — there are flood plains where the vegetation grows a little more thickly.